Safety on the Internet

1. Safety on the Internet By: Rachel Morello, Eddie Miller, Kyle Hayward, Heather Shuboney, and Lisa Ross

2. Advantages of Using the Internet at Home and School • Provides children with easy access to information for school • Provides an interactive way for children to learn while having fun (example: learning games) • Provides children another way to learn instead of traditional text book reading • Provides visual information for children to look at (example: looking up a picture of the moon) • Provides a way for the child and their parents to look together • Provides a way for parents to interact with their children while they are learning educational material

3. Concerns when Using the Internet at Home and at School Home • When using the internet children/students may stumble upon inappropriate content or websites. • The question as to whether or not the website/source is credible or not is a concern. • Safety (Stranger Danger) Children should never give out any personal information. • When using the internet children may unknowingly download viruses that can harm the computer. • Addiction, some children may become so addicted to using the computer that their amount of physical fitness or other such activities decreases. • Identity theft. Children can unknowingly give out personal information or allow access to information on their computer to other people online. (hackers) • Predators. These people will try and “trap” younger children online and find them in real life.

4. What Parents Can Do To Help Kids With Internet Safety Parents can protect their children by keeping the computer in their family room so they can keep an eye on what is going on the computer. Parents can sit their family down and talk to them about chat rooms and the possibility of internet predators. Parents should show their children examples of what can happen to them if they try to meet up with someone they meet from an internet chat room. EX. Parents tell children story of a child being abducted after meeting an internet predator. Parents can set clear guidelines as to what their children can and cannot do on the internet. Parents can sit down with their children and “walk” them through how to safely use the internet and give them an idea of what websites and chat rooms are safe or safer than others. Parents can look up the internet history and see what websites and chat rooms their children have been to and act accordingly if they discover that their child has been using an unsafe website or chat room. Internet Predator

5. What Educators Can Do To Help • Educate students on the dangers that lurk online • Educate parents on the dangers that lurk online • Explain what parents and students can do to decrease possible online dangers: • Create personal internet safety pledge(computer rules) • Reading privacy policies • Look into safeguarding programs • Monitoring & Filtering capabilities • Use Acceptable Use Policies(AUP) • These are "contracts" that outline how students can use the technology, what they cannot do with it and the consequences for violating the policy. • Monitor student use of computers carefully • Inform students of i-SAFE’s website and assign work • i-SAFE's education component provides students with dynamic, interactive, up-to-date e-Safety curriculum in the classroom, online and in the community. These prevention-oriented lessons employ peer-to-peer communication and cooperative learning activities to help students retain this valuable information.

6. Websites for More Information on Keeping Kids Safe on the Internet The first website; Yahoo Kids , has tabs where children can search games, music, movies, jokes, sports and even can even ask Earl for help on their homework or educational question. Safe Kids is a website that gives information on how to make sure your child is safe online as well as when they are texting one another. There is also a tab for both the parent/teacher/guardian and children can print out a contract to read and sign to take an oath to protect the student. This is found on the Printable Contracts for Parents and Children page. Ask Kids is a search engine credible for children to look up information without the parent needing to worry about explicit and inappropriate information or images popping up. I suggest parents should make this their homepage this way children are limited to access to the outside world and are in a safe cyber environment. 4. My Kids Browser is a program that offers a free trial or yearly subscription for either $29.95 (where you can download the software file) or $39.95 (where they will ship the cd-rom to your home) and install the browser on your computer that will limit the information children can visit online. Websites are able to be password protected so only adults may visit them, and there is history notifications allowing the adults to see what exactly their children/ students are researching.